What social media platforms do they use to tell their story? To connect? To make purchases?These were some of the questions addressed by Rich Brooks, Founder of Flyte New Media and Agents of Change during the Jan. 20 Lunch & Learn social media lunch entitled “How to Reach Your Audience on Social Media… and Sell to Them” hosted by the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Brooks is a nationally-recognized speaker on entrepreneurial digital marketing and social media and founder of The Agents of Change. He is also a regular contributor to the SocialMediaExaminer and WCSH Channel 6’s evening news show 207 as the “tech guru.”

On Wednesday, Brooks spoke to a room full of members and non-member’s at the PRCC’s Lunch and Learn series January event about what businesses can do to not only draw customers to them, but to engage them on social media and eventually turn those leads into sales.

One of the most important steps is to know who your clients are and to give them what they are looking for, Brooks said.

“Good SEO (search engine optimization) is just good market research,” he said.

The first step Brooks said was to establish a digital marketing action plan, with the first of four steps centered around attraction. Brooks said using SEO and social media are two of the best ways to attract potential customers, but there also needs to a value or usefulness to the content.

The second part is retention, which means keeping any customers attracted to your business coming back.

“Now with social media we can keep those lines of communication open. They can follow us on Twitter, they can like us on Facebook, they can become connected to us on LinkedIn, they can subscribe to our YouTube channel,” Brooks said. “There’s a lot of different ways to keep these lines of communication open. Social media is also important for retention.”

The third part of any action plan is conversion, or turning leads into sales.

“Conversion is about just getting someone to take a desired step at your website - either filling out a contact form for an email newsletter, or to buy now, whatever it is,” Brooks said. “I do know that by warming up on social media and establishing that credibility and trust with your audience you will improve your conversion rates.”

The last piece of the action plan puzzle is measuring the different aspects of your outreach. By using analytics to know what works and what doesn’t businesses can better hone their message, Brooks said.